


Exit Strategy

by firefly124



Series: The Sound of Running Water [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefly124/pseuds/firefly124
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While she was back in the second century, River Song noticed more felt wrong than the disappearance of stars, and once the universe had rebooted, she went back to find out what it was.  She wasn't expecting to dig up what looked like an incompetent Time Agent with a fried vortex manipulator and a TARDIS key in his pocket, never mind one who needed a quick ride back to 2008.  (Gen with canon pairings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Strategy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Torchwood Classic Big Bang](http://tw-classic-bb.livejournal.com), this is the sequel, or possibly prequel, to my [Who Reversebang](http://who-reversebang.livejournal.com) story, [The Sound of Running Water](http://archiveofourown.org/works/325979), but can stand alone. Art is courtesy of [Slowsunrise](http://slowsunrise.livejournal.com), whose master post is [here](http://slowsunrise.livejournal.com/56339.html). Please go give her some love for her gorgeous work. Huge thanks to [Canaan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Canaan) for beta-reading and [Saracen77](http://saracen77.livejournal.com) for Brit-picking. Any remaining errors are mine. Also, I don't own _Torchwood_ or _Doctor Who_ , otherwise, this would be canon instead of AU.

[ ](http://slowsunrise.livejournal.com/56339.html)

_“River, who are you?”_

_“You're going to find out very soon now. And I'm sorry, but that's when everything changes.”_

River materialized next to an abandoned hut and quickly took in her surroundings. Still abandoned, no Romans to be seen. Definitely still a sense of something very wrong here, something that hadn't been fixed by the Doctor rebooting the universe. She ducked inside and rummaged through her stash for something a bit more appropriate or at least practical than the outfit she'd worn to lurk outside her parents' wedding.

Yes, she was definitely going to have to settle for practical. Re-establishing the Cleopatra identity wouldn't work for what she had planned, if you could even call it a plan. She held up a pair of jodhpurs and crinkled her nose thoughtfully. Shame to leave them behind. No, she just couldn't. Well, even though it'd be a waste to cover them up, they'd pass as undergarments, she supposed. Smudging up a few Roman garments and adding the odd strategically-placed tear meant she could be either an opportunist who'd stolen them (which was, to be quite honest, entirely true) or a wronged wife whose husband had buggered off (which was also arguably true) depending upon the sympathies of whomever she might run into. Hallucinogenic lipstick to hand in case anyone got too curious about the bit of leather on her wrist, or anything else for that matter. Yes, that should about do it.

Hoofbeats outside might just be passing through, but also might be drawing closer. Someone else looking for a hideout, most likely. She flipped open her vortex manipulator and did a quick scan to see if whatever was scratching at her time-sense could be localized now that the whole universe wasn't collapsing into a crack in reality.

Well, now. Wasn't _that_ interesting.

The cracks in reality should have closed, but the readings she was getting suggested the existence of a rift that might be the source of what she'd felt. It couldn't be the famed Cardiff Rift, though. Well, the readings she was getting might be, but not the thing she was looking for. She'd been in 21st century Britain when it was at its peak and hadn't felt that itch. No, whatever it was might be near the Rift—possibly even came through it—but it was separate. Still, that gave her a nice strong signal to lock onto, even if it made it harder to read the area and be sure she wasn't about to teleport onto someone's dinner table. She selected her coordinates carefully, nonetheless, and punched the teleport activation sequence just as the hoofbeats came to a halt outside her hut.

~0~

Time had long since ceased to have any meaning. There was only the cold and the dark nothingness of death, interrupted by the agony of lungs striving to fill with air and drawing in nothing. Pressure as the compacted soil tried to crush him. And still, always the dark.

Bits of memory sometimes leaked through, fragments that hardly made sense, but somehow they made those moments of agony just the least bit more bearable or sometimes exponentially worse.

Then the nothingness returned, and the cycle repeated.

~0~

It wasn't a dinner table that she landed on. It was, if anything rather worse. She slipped in the muck and landed hard on her backside.

“Bloody Wales and their bloody sheep!” 

Grateful not to have an audience—and this was one story, or at least part of a story, the Doctor would never, _ever_ hear—she scrambled to her feet and quickly scanned for the nearest water source. Of course, the sheep were already at it, but she stomped through them, and they parted with indignant bleats as she walked straight into the water and started scrubbing.

There was such a thing as too much authenticity.

Once that was done, she checked her readings and found that she'd still left herself with a good mile's trek towards … whatever it was. She'd hoped that proximity would let her separate the readings she was getting off the nascent Cardiff Rift from the itchy sensation in her head. On the contrary, the two seemed to be right on top of each other. The archaeologist in her wondered if she was about to stumble upon an explanation for what had torn the thing open to begin with. One of the leading theories by the fifty-second century was a Feloxitine hyperdrive crash, which only went to show that people never got tired of inventing ridiculous theories. The Feloxtians hadn't developed that technology until nearly the thirty-eighth century by human reckoning, and while it would be possible for such a device to fall through the Cardiff Rift to a different point in time, that would require said Rift to exist in the first place.

Amateurs.

She started walking.

~0~

The cycle of nothingness and dirt had settled into an ongoing spiral of agony, hope, guilt, and despair with little to no sense of what reason he had to feel any of them. He didn't understand where the hope came from, especially, but it burned like a brand. Didn't know if it was a good thing or just one more shard of pain along with the others. Couldn't spend the energy to think about it before the cycle resumed.

And then something began to shift.

~0~

There. She was nearly on top of it, to go by both the readings she was getting and the fast-growing headache.

To her left, something rustled at the tree line. It wasn't what she was looking for—wrong direction—but she glanced over in any case. Just because she wasn't looking for angry, spear-wielding Celts didn't mean she wasn't about to find one. 

A wolf stared back at her for a moment, evidently decided she wasn't prey despite smelling rather like it, and vanished into the foliage. Something about that sent an odd thrill down her spine, but she could examine that later, as she appeared to be standing directly on top of both the epicenter of the Rift and the goal of her mission.

“Well that can't be right.”

It wasn't the fact that the grass she was stood on was no different than any other patch she'd seen today., nor was it the Rift's signature energy levels. For some reason—probably all the Rift energy—she hadn't picked up on it before, but there seemed to be a homing signal of some kind broadcasting from directly beneath her feet. It was not, thank Time, consistent with something that would have been attached to a Feloxitine hyperdrive. That would have been embarrassing. Whatever it was definitely didn't belong in this time, though, and was not remotely powerful enough by itself to cause the formation of the Rift, whatever potential paradox had planted it here.

A more focused scan showed that the item was not alone in being out of its place and time. There was also a piece of barely functional Time Agency technology next to it—which probably explained rather a lot—and human remains. Or … she flicked the screen on her wristcomp. What was wrong with it? The only human life signs it should be picking up were hers. There, one set again.

She looked down at the patch of ground beneath her. Shame she didn't have proper digging equipment. Nor had it been invented yet. Ah well. She'd always been good at improvising.

Hours later, River was tired, her head ached worse than ever, and she still couldn't make sense of it all. 

Throwing the “shovel” she'd stolen up out of the ditch, she took hold of her prize, punched a couple of buttons, and took the easy way back to the top with it. The Doctor could complain all he liked about how bad for her it was, but giving herself a hernia trying to crawl out of this carrying _that_ wasn't going to do her any good either.

For all her work, she had a signet ring, a vortex manipulator with its time travel and teleport functions utterly fried—and the pattern of damage was _very_ interesting indeed—and the relatively fresh corpse of what had to be an utterly incompetent Time Agent wearing 20th and 21st century clothing in the 2nd century. All of which had clearly been buried far too long for this corpse to be so fresh, though the signet ring had some intriguing properties that might have had a preservative effect. She brushed dirt from the man's face with the same care she'd use on any archaeological find as she considered the pieces of this puzzle.

None of this was enough to cause the spatio-temporal distortions she was still picking up. There were anachronisms like this scattered throughout the history of every planet in the universe. Granted, not usually quite so many all together, but Earth tended to be special like that. It was, perhaps, possible the famed Rift was a natural wonder of the universe after all and had simply sucked this poor fellow in from Time knew where and when. And the sense of utter _wrongness_ she'd felt as far away as Stonehenge that clearly centered on the same location was a complete coincidence. And any minute now a unicorn would come prancing out of the trees farting rainbows.

No, something was very wrong here—something that might not require rebooting the universe, but River was absolutely certain it needed fixing. She might not be a Time Lord, not really, but she _was_ the child of the TARDIS, and she could just tell these things. Speaking of which, there was a fourth anomaly in the Time Agent's pocket.

“What in the universe,” she muttered, “are you doing with ...”

Before she could finish her thought, much less her sentence, the body at her feet convulsed and drew in a deep, gasping breath. River jumped back, one hand picking up her shovel and the other reaching for the gun she had hidden under her tunic. She didn't pull it out, not just yet. No point in showing all her cards until she knew what she was dealing with.

The man before her spat dirt from his mouth and scrubbed at his eyes before looking around him wildly and scrambling to his feet.

“What …? Who …? How …?” he sputtered in American-accented English, his voice cracked with disuse.

“Pity,” she replied, “I was hoping you could answer some of those questions for me.”

~0~

Air screamed into his lungs like a thousand shards of steel as Jack struggled to scrub the dirt from his eyes and spit it out of his mouth, the cycle finally broken. Thoughts jumbled together and fought for his attention as he found his feet and tried to take in his surroundings.

He was above ground.

This wasn't Cardiff.

And that wasn't any of the people he'd expected to dig him up. Not that he was complaining, exactly, as he took in her appearance. She was dressed like someone from the early first millenium, but with clothes that did a bit too good a job showing off her admittedly hot curves to really be a local. The shovel was a nice touch, but he bet that wasn't all she had on her. Automatically, his hand dropped to his side, reaching for his Webley as he tried to form the words to ask what the hell was going on then cursed as he found it wasn't there.

“What …? Who …? How …?” Thoughts tumbled over each other as his mouth went through the now-unfamiliar motions of speech with vocal cords that still felt coated in dirt.

“Pity,” she replied, “I was hoping you could answer some of those questions for me.”

Great. If she didn't know either, then he was even worse off than he'd thought. That and she had him more than out-armed, as she drew what looked like an alpha meson blaster, substantially more advanced and effective than the shovel in her other hand, though either would do the job. Her sleeve rode up, revealing exactly how she'd ended up in this time with that gun. A vortex manipulator, obviously functional. It was, in fact, just what he needed, if he could figure out how to get it off her.

There was something familiar about her though, if he could just …

[ ](http://slowsunrise.livejournal.com/56339.html)

“Dr. Song?” he asked, his voice barely a croak, as the memory finally slotted into place. He resisted the urge to stand to attention, not particularly wanting to annoy her while she still had him in her sights.

“Depends who's asking,” she replied, not lowering her blaster.

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he said. He swallowed, trying with moderate success to get his mouth and voice working properly again. “I take it you haven't met me yet.”

“But you've met me.” It wasn't a question.

Why hadn't he thought to ask her for a trust phrase the last time they'd met? It was standard procedure for just this sort of situation between Time Agents—not that he'd been one in ages, nor was he sure she really was either, vortex manipulator or no.

“Harkness?” she asked. “As in Torchwood?”

“Got it in one.” He gave her his best grin, ignoring the dirt that he could feel encrusted into his face. Then he sobered a bit, remembering what he was doing there. “You here to save the world again?”

  
[ ](http://slowsunrise.livejournal.com/56339.html)   


Dr. Song laughed. “Just finished with that. I thought I was going to discover the source of the Cardiff Rift.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Archaeologist,” she added by way of explanation.

Ah. Well, she'd never said what she was a doctor of. He accepted the leather water container that she passed him and took several long swallows, savoring the cool wetness as it ran down his throat.

“And I think, just maybe, I have,” she continued. “How are you alive?”

Jack scowled as he handed back the nearly empty container. How could he answer that? She knew the Doctor and knew _of_ Jack, but didn't know much about him, obviously. The timeline was already a disaster without him adding to it, so he gave her the bare minimum. “Something happened to me a long time ago. Made me a 'fixed point.' I can't die.”

“What?” she asked. “No, that can't be right. Events are meant to be fixed points, not people.”

Jack spread his hands. “And yet, here I am.”

“Yes, so you are.” She looked at him oddly. “Impossible.” She shot him a flirty smile. “I like impossible.”

“I bet you do.” Jack shot her what he hoped was a leer, but then his eyes slid back to her wrist and her vortex manipulator. 

“And someone buried you alive,” she mused, pointedly looking him over. “How long?”

“What year is it?” he countered.

“One hundred and two C.E.”

“Seventy-five years then.” He wondered what had brought her back this far in time. Not that he'd ever been one for looking a gift horse in the mouth, but he wasn't buying that this was just a coincidental discovery on an archaeological dig. For starters, most archaeologists worked with large teams, not alone.

“Ouch.” She gave a sympathetic wince.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. He couldn't think about it. Wouldn't think about it. 

Dr. Song finally holstered her blaster and set down her shovel, saying, “You have a TARDIS key. Didn't you have any way to get a message to the Doctor? Surely he wouldn't have left you here.”

“If your theory is right and my being here caused the Rift, he'd never interfere with that. Too many events depend on its existence.” Jack swallowed hard as he considered the implications of that. _Had_ his being here caused the Rift in the first place? Or maybe landing essentially on top of himself in 1869 when he'd arrived from the Game Station? Two paradoxes on top of each other just might do it. He tried for a lighter tone. “Also, there was the slight problem of all the dirt in the way.”

She raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything else about it. Interesting. 

“Well, I'm not burying you again, just to make that clear,” she said. “Even I'm not that cruel.”

At first Jack thought that was a rather odd thing for her to say, then thought back to what she'd done to the Master the last time they'd met. Yeah, she did have a bit of a cruel streak, come to think of it, but she'd been on their side and—equally, if not more, importantly, the Doctor's—and that counted for a lot in Jack's book.

“Besides,” she continued, “the Rift's already in place and likely to keep growing without your help. These things do.”

Jack wasn't quite as certain of that, but if it meant not going back to smothering repeatedly, he'd go along with that line of reasoning. He'd accepted it as his due penance, still thought he probably deserved it if he let himself consider it at all, but he wasn't in a hurry to get back to it.

“Can you get me back to Cardiff then?” he asked, shooting a look at her obviously functional vortex manipulator.

“We're _in_ Cardiff,” she said with a laugh. “But yes, I can get you back to your time. When did you leave? Does that thing work at all?”

He flipped open the faceplate, punched a few buttons, and showed her the spatiotemporal coordinates he'd been at before his last jump, grateful that at least that function still worked.

“Burnt it out getting here?” she asked, her tone somewhere between professional and personal curiosity. 

“Long story,” he said. They were taking enough chances right now without telling her something she wasn't meant to know yet. “Another time?”

“Count on it.” She smirked. “All right. Hold on tight then.”

In a blink, they were stood atop Cardiff Castle in 2008.

“I'd almost forgotten the bombing of Cardiff,” she said in an odd tone. “It's hard to know where to start.”

For her, perhaps it was. Jack, however, was already scanning for partial matches on his DNA. The two that came up well outside the limits of Cardiff showed normal life signs, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Gray either hadn't known about them or hadn't found them yet. That was something. The other match was, perhaps unsurprisingly, inside the Hub.

“This is where,” he said, struggling to control the mixture of fury and grief that threatened to overwhelm him. “Stop him, and the rest is mopping up.”

“I do like a man with a plan,” she said. “All right then. How'd you find him so quickly though?”

“DNA scan.”

River raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“He's my brother,” Jack bit out, exasperated. “Can we go now? We're wasting time!”

“And I thought my family was confusing. All right, all right. Keep your shirt on.” River punched in the coordinates with a little shrug. “Or don't. That could be fun, too.”

“Time and a place?” Even Jack had his limits, though most who knew him would probably be surprised by that.

“Time,” she said with a smile as she added something more to the coordinates he'd given her, “is not the boss of me.”

She slapped the cover shut and grabbed Jack's hand, placing it over her vortex manipulator, and with a lurch, the sight of Cardiff burning was replaced with the Hub's holding cells.

~0~

They arrived in a dank hallway lined with what appeared to be cells. River suppressed a shudder, dungeons being something she would never grow fond of. At the far end of the hall, a man was walking away from one of the cells as another man raged at him.

“What have you done with him?” echoed through the hall.

Harkness was already running. River quickly followed but was still several steps behind as Harkness tackled the other man, dragging him to the ground.

A cacophony of voices assailed her from the cells, several calling her by name when they weren't calling to Jack, but she managed to single out the one rattling off a series of numbers. It was the one on the end, wearing a rather well-cut suit to be locked away in a dungeon like this.

“Please let us out,” he said. He repeated the code. “What are you waiting for?”

Harkness turned and nodded to her, not releasing the man he was restraining.

She punched the code into her wristcomp and the doors swung open. Two of the people ran towards Harkness, the cute one in the suit reaching him first and stooping down over him.

It took her a moment to recognize the one in the red.

“Johann,” she said as she let her hand drift towards her blaster. “Interesting get-up. Didn't you know which century you were aiming for?”

“Could say the same, River,” he replied, looking her over with a leer. “What brings you here? Not that I mind the rescue—speaking of which it might be a good idea to re-lock those doors before our friends the Weevils wake up—but when you show up, things tend to get _interesting_.”

Behind her, River heard the click of fingers flying over keys and the cell doors swinging shut. 

“You can talk,” said a woman's voice behind her. “I'm still not sure we shouldn't just put you back in one of these cells, John or Johann or whatever the hell your name is.”

“I'm for that, actually,” the man in the suit put in. 

“No,” Harkness said, his voice muffled. “Just … help me, Ianto. The rest of you, go save Cardiff. We'll join you when we're done.”

“Right, this way,” the woman shouted, running past them and starting up a flight of stairs, dark hair streaming behind her.

“Ladies first,” Johann said with an attempt at a gallant bow.

“I prefer you where I can see you,” River replied.

“Well, now, that sounds promising,” he said with a smirk.

River finally pulled out her blaster. “Now.”

“You know I love it when you get all bossy,” he said, though he did finally start up the stairs.

River spared a look over her shoulder to see Harkness and the one in the suit picking up the third man, who must be Harkness' brother though she failed to see any resemblance. As she ran up the stairs, she noticed the headache that she'd been ignoring for the last bit started to subside. Something to think about later.

The stairs opened out into a huge room that looked like nothing so much as a converted Tube station with, for reasons River couldn't imagine, a pool of water in the middle. There was a woman at the top of another flight of stairs working furiously at a bank of computers and speaking to someone River couldn't see.

“What is it, Tosh?” the woman from the cells asked. 

“It's Turnmill,” the woman at the computer said. “Even with power restored, we can't get the cooling system back online. Something must be physically jammed, possibly damaged by the rising temperatures.”

“What does that mean?” the woman from the cells demanded. “Can you fix it or not?”

The woman at the computer, named Tosh, apparently, finally looked up and took in the bedraggled group.

“River!” she gasped. “Please tell me you've got another miracle up your sleeve.”

So, this Tosh had met her too.

“Sorry,” River replied. “The last one hasn't happened for me yet. Glad to hear it's going to go well though.”

The long-haired woman from the cells turned to look at her in confusion. “What do you mean it hasn't happened for you yet?”

Johann cut her off. “Time travel's a bitch. Could we focus on the impending nuclear meltdown please?”

“Right,” Tosh said, her attention back on the screens in front of her. “The reactor's already critical and we can't restart the cooling. The only option left is to channel the fuel into the containment bunker and put it in permanent lockdown. It won't stop the meltdown, but it will contain it. I'm opening the protocols now, Owen. I'll talk you through it. Just remember to get out before it locks down.”

Her mouth quirked as she apparently heard a reply from “Owen.”

“I've got to see how they're doing at the station,” the woman from the cells said. “River, you got this bastard covered?”

“Not the way I wish she would,” Johann said.

“Yes,” River said with a roll of her eyes. “So don't get any funny ideas.”

“I do not get 'funny' ideas. I get brilliant ideas, I'll have you know,” Johann replied.

“Yeah, so brilliant they blow up the city,” Harkness said as he joined them. “What's our status, Tosh?”

“Just containing … No!” Tosh stared at the screen in front of her, horror written across her features. “Owen, there's been a power surge. Get out of there!”

The look on Tosh's face said it all. Obviously the man was trapped.

River's stomach clenched. It wasn't sending her love to the center of the explosion that rebooted the universe, but it was horrifying to think of someone trapped in a room about to be flooded with nuclear fuel. 

“Where is he?” she demanded, flicking her eyes briefly to Harkness. “And how much time is there?”

“Minutes at most,” Tosh answered.

“I'll cover him,” the suited one said, stepping to River's side.

She tucked her blaster back into place and flipped open her vortex manipulator.

“Tosh, give me exact lattitude and longitude of Owen's position'” River said. “And tell Owen to get to the middle of the room, away from anything solid.”

Tosh rattled off a set of coordinates and relayed the instructions, and Harkness moved to take River's wrist in hand, stopping when he saw she was already translating them into Galactic Fourspace Standard.

Without another word, because sometimes time _was_ the boss of her, River teleported into a barely lit room with only one occupant.

“Owen, I take it?” she asked.

“River, you are a sight for sore eyes,” he replied. “Come to get me out with that wrist strap thing of yours? Rough ride, but it beats staying here.”

River raised her eyebrows and decided not to ask. Obviously he knew what to do, as he placed his hand just over the strap but didn't obscure the display. She punched the reversal sequence and they teleported back.

The problem with teleportation, River mused as she picked herself up out of the pool of water, was when you couldn't be specific enough about your destination. She'd adjusted for Owen's bodyspace requirements but hadn't had time to familiarize herself enough with the Torchwood base. At least it was an improvement over landing in sheep dung. Owen, who'd at least landed beside the bloody water, gave her a hand up.

Harkness was interrogating Johann, though she couldn't quite make out about what, even when she'd made it back up to their level.

“What the fuck's Hart done now?” Owen asked. “Because I thought he'd about maxed out with blowing up the city and causing a meltdown. Thanks for getting me out of there, by the way.”

“No problem,” River replied. “ _Is_ the meltdown contained?”

“As far as I can tell,” Tosh said.

“What do you mean as far as you can tell?” Owen asked.

“What. Have. You. Done. To. Mainframe?” Harkness barked.

“Nothing, I swear!” Johann said, hands up. “Nothing I did when I used the rift manipulator should've caused this!”

“Caused what?” River asked.

“The readings I'm getting,” Tosh said. “Or rather, not getting. The computer seems to be working, but there's no data. Nothing from Turnmill. Nothing from the _city_. It's like everything just vanished.”

River began to get a sinking feeling in her stomach. Right then, her vortex manipulator beeped. She didn't even have to look at the readout to know who it was. With a sigh, she clicked the button to answer, and the Doctor's image projected about half a meter in front of her.

“Who is that?” Owen asked. “Only, people who like to phone in that way tend to be about to wreak havoc.”

“River,” the Doctor said, an exasperated note in his voice, “what have you done now? Not to mention … where are you? Oh, Jack! Hello there! And Doctor … I don't remember your name, sorry. Did we even do names? That time with the space pig, I mean. Bit of a madhouse that day, what with blowing up Downing Street and all.”

“Sato,” Tosh replied, looking startled. “Not a medical doctor though. Do I know… ? Doctor? You look … different.”

“You've regenerated again,” Jack said. “I like the look. A bit young, but you'll grow into it.”

“Hey!” the Doctor protested. “I've still got centuries on you, young man, and you are not too old to put across … oh, never mind, you'd probably enjoy it.”

That drew a round of nervous snickers and giggles and one throat being impatiently cleared. River just rolled her eyes.

The woman from the cells came running back into the main area through what looked like a repurposed airlock.

“Anything, Gwen?” Harkness asked.

“I couldn't even get past the lift,” Gwen replied. “It wasn't that the door wouldn't open, because it did, but then there was no hallway. No … anything.”

“That's what I'm calling about,” the Doctor said. “River, you seem to have a fondness for creating bubble universes, but it's a habit you're really going to have to break.”

“I can't imagine what I've done,” she said defensively. “All I've been doing today is playing chauffeur. Well, and grave robber, but that goes with the job.”

“Obviously somewhere along the line, you've unfixed another fixed point,” the Doctor said. 

“If we're in a bubble universe,” River asked, stalling for time as she tried to work out which event could be the problem, “how, exactly, are you calling me?”

“What's a bubble universe?” Owen asked.

“Bit of a nonsense phrase, really,” the Doctor said. “But it's what happens when you erase the rest of the universe and the spot you're in keeps going. Bit smaller this time than the last. Lucky thing I was in the Vortex when it happened. Not so lucky when I tried to land at your parents' house.”

River's brain caught up with itself as she put that last sentence together with the rest of the conversation. This Doctor wasn't the one she'd left mere days ago, the one who'd asked who she was. He was much further along his timeline, the only version of himself actually in the Vortex at the moment the rest of the universe had gone missing.

“Erase the rest of the universe?” Gwen asked.

“Bit worse than the last apocalypse, then,” the suited one said, gun still trained on Johann.

“How do we fix it?” Harkness asked.

“It can't be the reactor,” River said. “I remember the bombings and the contained meltdown being on the news. That _happened_ , and there was no one reported trapped inside. But that's the last event I was part of, Doctor, you've got to believe me.”

“It might not be a single event,” Tosh said coming around her desk to join the rest of them. “If there were enough minor but fixed events, could that cause the same problem?”

“Nah,” the Doctor said. “Well, maybe. If they weren't exactly minor. River, tell me exactly what you've done today.”

“You sure this isn't just a ploy to get a peek into what's going to be in my diary?” she asked with a weak smile. 

He fixed her with a look. She got on with explaining.

There were fewer gasps than she'd expected when she described what she'd found back in the second century, so at least some of them must have known where their leader had been. River didn't take her eyes off the Doctor as she continued the tale.

When she finished, the Doctor ran his fingers through his hair, leaving his hand at the back of his head. What he asked next was unfortunately one of the things she'd been afraid of.

“Are you sure that was what caused the Rift?”

“Well, I can't be certain, but a recurrent paradox does seem a likely possibility.” She spared Harkness an apologetic glance. He looked … resigned.

“And there was no other way for this bloke to get out of that bunker?”

“None that I could see.” She glanced at Owen as well.

“But digging Jack up early—sorry, by the way, Jack, would've got you out myself if I'd known—wouldn't cause the Rift not to exist, so that's not really a sufficient paradox all by itself. I think Dr. Sato might be onto something, because if it was just a matter of lengthening someone's timeline when they were meant to die, you wouldn't have a bubble universe, you'd have Reapers. But even together, I don't think it's enough to cause this. I mean, the last time was a bit different.”

“What if it meant the Rift wasn't strong enough?” Harkness asked. “Not enough to fuel the TARDIS, so you never stopped here to top up. Or not powerful enough for some alien or bit of tech that we've encountered over the years to come through.”

“I'm not sure,” the Doctor said. “But we've got to fix it quickly, because otherwise that bubble of yours is going to collapse, and then there'll be no going back.”

“You can't ask me to undo either of those things, Doctor,” she said softly. “It was one thing, what you had me do before. I knew you were going to cheat. Not to mention, we can't even get out of this ...” She looked around. “... place, anyway, so I can't go back to either the second century or the nuclear plant.”

“Ah, but you can,” the Doctor said. “Same as you could when the stars went out, obviously. But you're right, whole different ballgame. Different set of rules, whole new strategy. Now if only I could figure out what the game was.”

“How much time do we have?” Harkness asked.

“Now that I have the parameters of the problem,” Tosh said, a Xlesian scanner in hand, “it appears that the radius of the 'bubble' we're in is shrinking at a rate of about one meter per hour.”

River calculated quickly how long it would take to shrink to a size too small to accommodate the lot of them. “Just a few hours then.”

“Plenty of time!” the Doctor said, clapping his hands and rubbing them together the way he did. “Now, we've done the universe with no stars, and we've done the universe with everything happening at the same time. We don't have the Pandorica or an exploding TARDIS to work with this time—and no, sorry, we are _not_ doing that again—and we don't have the Teselecta either. But somewhere, somehow, there's something we can use. Just a matter of figuring out what it is and what to do with it.”

“The TARDIS _exploded_?” Harkness asked. “How are you in the time vortex then?”

“Oh, she got better.” The Doctor waved that concern away. “But look, you're with Torchwood. 'If it's alien it's ours?' Not the best motto, in my opinion, though the mantra of the Conaaf was worse. Something about handbaskets and ribbons. Anyway, my point is, you have stuff there. Lots and lots of stuff, and something in that lot is bound to be useful.”

“If the archives are still inside the radius of our 'bubble universe,'” the suited one said, “and if you have any idea what we're looking for, I can find it.”

“Ianto Jones!” the Doctor said. “Archivist extraordinaire! Haven't seen you since … well, hasn't happened for you yet, though, has it? And that's another thing ...”

“Doctor,” River cut in, “what are we looking for?”

“Not really sure,” he said. “I'd know it when I saw it, but that doesn't really work with me here and you there. Anyway, River, you'll be able to work it out. Trust me on this. Meanwhile, I'm going to have to shut this line of communication down, as it's draining the TARDIS' reserves, and I'm not in a hurry to find out what happens when they run out. Good luck!”

River rolled her eyes as his image blinked out, and she looked at the suited bloke named Ianto. “If you're in charge of these archives, someone else will have to keep an eye on that one.”

Jones nodded to Gwen, who took her own gun out and trained it on Johann.

“Guess we'll get to give you the grand tour this time,” Harkness said. “Or as grand as possible. At least we've got more to work with than a screwdriver and a banana.”

“You'd be amazed at what you can accomplish with a screwdriver and a banana,” River said with a wink.

“Believe me, I have been.” Harkness gave a short laugh. “Ianto?”

“If you wouldn't mind coming this way?” He extended a hand before him leading towards yet another set of stairs.

“I'll track you both and let you know if you're running out of room,” Tosh said from behind them.

There really didn't seem to be any answer to that.

~0~

“So, what are we going to do then, just stand here staring at each other while the universe collapses?” Johann demanded. “Because I can think of plenty of things I'd rather be doing with you, you, or you, and maybe even you.”

Jack rolled his eyes. 

“Fuck off, Hart,” Owen said, obviously offended at being the last in that list. “As if any of us would do you, end of the universe or not.”

“Weren't you the one suggesting an orgy last time?” Gwen asked.

“I'm almost certain that's still my job,” Jack cut into the banter that was growing more than just edged with hysteria. He had to get them under control and focused. “Meanwhile, psychopath or not, he's got a point. Sitting around waiting isn't what we do.”

“I've got a search program running on the secure archives,” Tosh said. “They shouldn't be affected by the decreasing boundaries of the bubble universe for another hour or two after the main archives become inaccessible, plus we have a better idea what those items actually do. More data tags to work with.”

“Great idea,” Jack said. “Now, what about the rest of us?”

“Should we be relocating the Weevils?” Gwen asked.

It was a tempting thought. Pointless, really, as either the universe would end regardless or things would reset somehow, but it would give Jack something to think about other than the possibility that he might actually survive the total collapse of the universe … or that he might not.

Or that he'd just frozen his brother in another equally pointless gesture. Killing him now might actually be kinder, but Jack couldn't bring himself to do it.

“I am _not_ spending my last hours wrestling Weevils,” Owen said. 

“Not like you have to actually _wrestle_ them,” Gwen muttered.

“Children,” Jack snapped, pointing a finger at the wall behind him, “I will turn this universe around!”

Tosh giggled, then schooled her face to seriousness. At least, she tried, but she quickly gave in and rested her head in her hands as she laughed. Gwen's lips twisted into a small smile, though she never took her gun off John. Owen just rolled his eyes.

“What? I haven't spent long enough in this backwards century to get these obscure cultural references,” Johann said with a shrug.

“Or we could just put this one in the cells,” Gwen suggested.

“With the Hoix?” Owen asked, a hopeful note in his voice.

Jack sighed. 

“Gwen, stand down,” he said. “This one's got as much to lose as the rest of us right now. I want you, Owen, and Tosh going through your personal logs. See if anything jumps out at you that might have the potential to affect temporal energies. I'll be doing the same.”

“And me?” Johann asked. “What's my homework going to be, teacher?”

Jack went into his office, pulled out the top drawer from one of the files, and brought it back out, setting it on the floor where it was nearly equally visible from everyone's work stations.

“Paper? I get paper?” The look of offense would be comical if he hadn't been at least part of the cause of this mess.

“You really think I'm letting you near Mainframe again?” Jack asked, arching an eyebrow.

Johann started to say something, then shrugged. “Yeah, even I can't argue that one. But paper? Seriously?”

“Ianto and I have been working on getting everything digitized,” Tosh said. “However, some of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century documents are too worn to scan well, and manual input takes time.”

Jack saw Johann mouth the word “some” while looking at the file drawer in dismay.

“Considering when and where things fall through the Rift from,” Jack said, “when they arrived isn't a limiting factor, so get moving.”

Jack reflected for a moment that he and Johann actually should probably have gone to the physical archives with the others. While the Doctor had said that River would know what she needed when she saw it, the fact remained that a pair of Time Agents would help narrow things down further and faster. Giving himself a shake, Jack went into his office and sat at his computer, angling it so he could keep an eye on Johann. There were entirely too many hiding places, good hiding places, to be had in the archives, and in this together or not, he didn't trust Johann out of his sight.

~0~

The stairs leading down to the archives were steep and not terribly well-lit. River wondered if that was an effect of the bubble-universe, as they'd be cut off from external power sources, or possibly just something this lot did for ambience. Given the way Mr. Ianto Jones was proceeding as if nothing were amiss, she suspected the latter.

At the end of the stairwell was a securely locked door. Ianto opened it using a combination palm and retinal scanner that was a bit more advanced than similar devices in this century, she thought. Once the door opened, he bowed her in.

“I do like a young man with old-fashioned manners,” she said as she walked into an absolutely cavernous room filled with rows upon rows of file cabinets and storage cupboards with shelves of various and sundry containers along the back wall.

“As we don't know what we're looking for,” Ianto said, ignoring her comment, “it might be easiest to start with the as-yet-uncategorized items over there.” He indicated the back wall.

“That and if we lose ground to the universe collapsing, it'll be the first area to go.” River didn't think there was any way to calculate the odds on whether that specific wall would contain what they needed, but it would be worth ruling them out before they lost them.

“There is that as well.” He nodded. “Anything in a lead container is obviously giving off radiation of some kind. At a minimum, nothing down here explodes just from touching it, or it wouldn't have made it here. Beyond that, handle with care is the best advice I can give.”

River nodded and started for the shelves, a thrill of excitement running through her. Who knew what they might find?

~0~

Jack scrubbed his hand over his face. Nothing. A great big load of nothing was what he'd found. Granted, his digital logs went back much farther than the others', and he'd started from the 1950s, figuring they'd have recent years well-covered, but the task was beginning to seem impossible.

Rather like the fact that they had power to be doing any of this if the rest of the universe was gone, but he'd learned centuries in the future not to get too caught up in the eccentricities of a paradox while trying to solve it.

There was also the nagging thought that he couldn't quite squelch. He could be on the verge of losing them, all of them—even the Doctor, wherever he was in the Vortex—and surviving for eternity, alone. Climbing back into that grave was looking better and better by the minute. Except for the selfish corner of his mind that couldn't help asking if this was the one thing that could finish him off, actually let him rest. Burying him alive sure hadn't worked that way. It was bizarrely tempting to find out.

What would it be like? Would the cold and the dark continue forever? Or would even they cease to exist? Might that be worth it, to save even the dead by putting an end to that terrifying isolation?

No.

He didn't know why he was so certain. Maybe it was something as simple as the inborn drive for survival, whether of himself, his team, his species, or just life, period. Or maybe it was something more. But giving up wasn't something he did, any more than waiting around was, and he wasn't about to take it up for a hobby now.

Shooting a glance outside his door, he saw Johann sitting cross-legged on the floor and reading frantically through a folder of reports before tossing it onto a growing pile. The clicking of keys as the others searched their online logs told him they were still at it as well. And the CCTV showed Ianto and River working systematically through yet another row of unidentified artifacts.

It would be easier if he knew what he was looking for. The Doctor had sounded so certain that they'd find it. Jack hoped that meant something, though the emotion ached like lead in his stomach.

~0~

River was starting to get discouraged. In the past two hours, they'd uncovered two Cyloxian bread baskets, a Vieakow grenade launcher, a Luapon writing set that had been engraved for some pod's anniversary and that would make a very interesting paper if they could just find something useful to ensure there being anyone to read said paper, and a Stoshan laser-tuner. Nothing, however, that seemed likely to solve their predicament. They also lost several shelves at the far end of the wall.

“On the bright side,” Ianto said, “once we fix this, I'll be able to organise these items properly. You never know when something might come in useful.”

River nodded. “Right about now would be a good time.”

Ianto nodded in agreement and opened an odd orange box to pull out a Caaforian tentacle warmer. River identified it, and he gave her a wry look.

“What?”

“I'm not sure if Jack is going to be disappointed or unreasonably pleased with that.”

River grinned and turned to her own box, which unfortunately held the Publan version of an afghan.

This was getting them nowhere fast. Why had the Doctor been so sure she could work it out? She wondered what the lot of them were doing upstairs.

Ianto touched a finger to his ear and appeared to be listening. 

“Are you sure, Tosh? No, no, you're right. That would be logical. We're on our way.” He started walking briskly towards one of the rows of cabinets.

River fell in behind him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Tosh has been scanning the data archives, and located something in the secure archives that may be what we're looking for,” he said. “I can't believe I didn't think of it. That is, if the assumption that something soaked in artron energy that allows one to glimpse the past or the future is likely to be helpful.”

River raised her eyebrows. “Yes, that would be a reasonable assumption. What is it?”

Ianto led her to a safe built into a wall that was unfortunately growing very dark as the edge of the bubble universe crept inward. He keyed in a code, then slapped his palm over yet another palm reader and stared at the retinal scanner. 

“We don't know for certain,” he said. The door unlatched and he pulled it open, removing an item surprisingly similar in shape to a contemporary video game controller and yet clearly alien in origin. River couldn't even place a likely era or species of origin. “Jack said it's some sort of quantum transducer. We just called it the Ghost Machine.”

~0~

Jack wasn't sure how he felt about Tosh's idea. She was almost certainly right that it was their best chance out of all the categorized items. He should be relieved. He wanted to save the universe, didn't he?

The promise of potential oblivion had been there, though, and now it was gone. He was selfish enough to be disappointed at that. It was good that he had a few minutes before he had to face the others, so that he could bury that in with all the other parts of himself that it was best they never see.

What, he wondered, would the transducer show them? The timeline that had been meant to happen? The future actions they needed to take to correct the paradox they'd created? Either way, it was the most likely candidate. Still, he didn't look forward to using it.

Footsteps echoed up the stairwell, and just like the universe as a whole, he was out of time.

He shot the device a distrustful look as they drew closer with it. Dr. Song shot him a questioning look.

“Bad history with that,” he said. “I agree with Tosh that it seems to fit the parameters that would make the most sense. Doesn't mean I like it, especially since I'm not sure what to do with it.”

“How does it work?” she asked.

Ianto indicated the buttons on either side of the device, then, with a twisting motion, pulled it into two halves. “It seems that activating a single component allows one to view and experience the past while using both conjoined enables one to glimpse the future.”

“An unalterable future,” Gwen put in with a shudder. “No matter how much you might try to change it.”

“It has the potential,” Jack said, “to be used as a temporal navigation device. It traces quantum particles using technology somewhat similar to that used by the Time Agency. Not compatible though. It's as far removed from this”--he pointed to his disabled manipulator--”as this is from zigma rays.”

“And definitely not human in origin,” Dr. Song said. “Nor Galifreyan, for that matter. May I?”

Jack's eyebrows rose. He'd known she had a connection to the Doctor, but enough to know that for certain?

“Just don't press any buttons,” Ianto said as he handed one half of the device over.

Dr. Song looked vaguely insulted by the warning until she held the device. Lights suddenly activated, and Jack could almost see her fighting the urge to activate it.

“I can see why you locked it away,” she said. “The question is, if this is the key, how do we use it? I'd been hoping for something that would do more than allow for passive observation, but ... Would it show us the past that was meant to happen that has been changed?”

“So far, the two team members who've activated it only ever accessed actual past or future events,” Jack said. “But quantum theory would suggest the possibility of tracing alternate timelines as well.”

“It does seem to be tied to emotions,” Owen put in, a quaver to his voice. “The stronger the better.”

“And Bernie Harris saw … a future that didn't happen,” Gwen said, looking shaken, as well she might.

So, those were the two who'd tried it.

“Have you never used it yourself, then?” she asked Jack.

“No, why?”

“So the only people who've tried it have always followed linear time?” she pressed.

Jack grinned. “Excellent point.”

“You mean to say that exposure to artron radiation might increase the range of possibilities?” Tosh asked. “That perhaps Jack's theory requires the user to already _be_ a time traveler in order to utilize it to its fullest capacity?”

“That's exactly what I'm saying,” River said.

“How much time travel?” Gwen asked. “Or would teleportation with one of those be enough?” She pointed to Dr. Song's vortex manipulator.

“Run a scan for artron radiation traces, Tosh,” Jack said. “You all got a pretty good dose the last time 'John' was in town, but not compared to traveling in the TARDIS. Pretty sure it's down to the lovely Dr. Song and myself, but the scan will tell us who has the best shot.”

“Already running it and … wow.” Tosh took off her glasses and put them back on. “We've all got some, as you said. Jack, you're lit up like a Christmas tree ...”

He reached for the device. River made to hand it over.

“... but River, you look like a supernova.”

Jack wasn't surprised. He wasn't. Or at least, he wasn't about to show it. Just exactly how much time had she spent with the Doctor to soak up that much artron radiation?

“How long have you been with the Agency then?” he asked instead.

“Who said I was?” Dr. Song gave him a wink.

Jack couldn't help but smile, though he was sure it must look a bit forced. “Right, so the best chance we have of seeing the various possibilities is if you use it.”

“Location was a factor when it was used before,” Tosh said. “We are a bit limited in that regard.”

“How much of a factor?” River asked.

“Each past event seen was in the specific location where it had occurred,” Jack said. “The device seemed to be activated by locations with a substantial emotional imprint.”

“And that's when it would compel the holder to use it?” River asked.

“Yes.”

The pull had been getting stronger as they spoke, Jack could tell. Her fingers were twitching slightly as she fought to keep them off the activation button.

“Here goes nothing then,” she said as she depressed the button.

Seconds passed.

Dr. Song let go of the button, her cheeks damp as she looked at them all. Jack wondered what she'd seen but decided he'd rather not know. His nightmares were bad enough without giving them added material. 

“Well, we're not doing that,” she said softly. “Not a chance.”

“Whatever it is,” Jack pointed out, “it can't be worse than _erasing the universe_. And if it's what I'm thinking ...”

“No.” Dr. Song dashed the remaining tears from her eyes. 

Just exactly what had she seen? 

“There's a clue in there somewhere,” she said, “it's just a question of what it is and how we can use it. There has to be a way. There's always something.” She closed her eyes most likely replaying what she'd seen. “That ring. What is it?”

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled it out. “Homing device. Rated to last millennia. Good plan, actually.”

“I do try,” Johann replied.

“So you were counting on being able to locate it to dig him back up now,” Dr. Song said.

“Well, yeah.”

“On a site that would eventually house an organization dedicated to seeking out alien or noncontemporaneous technology?” she asked. “Seriously, did you think this through at all?”

Johann looked at her in confusion.

Toshiko got there first, though Jack was right there with her. “Torchwood would have found Jack too soon. He might have even found himself, crossing his own timeline.”

“I wouldn't have let that happen,” Jack said, though he felt more worried than certain. He'd only had so much to bargain with for most of Torchwood's history. Who might he have had to convince, and would they have listened?

“Well, I didn't have time to sit around chewing on alternatives,” Johann said, bristling. “Still better than letting him get buried with no way to find him at all.”

“Wait, isn't that how you found me?” Jack asked.

“What? No,” Dr. Song said. “Didn't realize it was there till I'd already found you. The important thing is, I think that gives me an idea how we can fix this, if I can just ...”

The room shook.

“What the hell was that?” Owen demanded.

“I don't want anyone to panic,” Tosh said, her eyes wide and slightly manic, “but I think the radius of our bubble universe isn't collapsing at quite the steady speed we thought. It looked it at first, because the increments were so small, but the actual differential is working on a different algorithm than I'd ...”

“Bottom line, Tosh,” Jack said.

“We've got an hour at best before we have barely enough air to breathe, let alone space to stand,” she said. “And that's if it doesn't change.”

“Where did you find this?” Dr. Song asked, holding up the transducer. 

“What does that matter?” Gwen asked.

“Some kid found it in a storage locker with a bunch of other stuff that must've come through the Rift,” Jack replied, catching the hint of where she might be going with this. “Unless, of course, it was dug up.”

Dr. Song grinned and nodded, all vestiges of the emotions she'd picked up from the device gone. “You already discovered the playback option. If this really was used for navigation, and I think you may be right on that score, then it has to have a recording function as well. Think we can find it?”

Jack grinned. This was going to be fun.

~0~

She wasn't sure if it was from his time with the Doctor or whether he really had been a Time Agent at some point, but Harkness definitely had a solid grasp of temporal mechanics and nanotechnology. Between them, they'd found the control sequence to record quantum signatures, and then he'd led her to a room just off the main area. It was piled with old and utterly useless chairs, desks, and what looked like it might once have been a bathtub.

“You sure do know how to impress a girl,” she said as she looked over the cobwebs.

“This is the single room where I've died and come back the most often,” he said, voice even flatter than his accent usually made it. “If you're right that it's the emotions that matter, not whatever actually brings me back, this is the place to find them.”

River used her vortex manipulator to interpret what the transducer was picking up in its resting state. Something, definitely, as the pull to activate it was strong. “At a quantum level, it hardly matters whether it's the event itself or your perception of it. That's why the user actually feels emotions that aren't theirs. It's picking up plenty in any case.”

“If this doesn't work ...”

“If this doesn't work, then we can talk about sticking you back in the ground,” she cut him off, wincing at the images that flashed in the air before her as she activated the recording function. Jack, tied to a chair being electrocuted, shot, carted over to a tub and drowned, and the deaths just kept going. “Bit sadistic, weren't they?”

“Trust me, not the worst I've met,” he said darkly.

“I think that's got it,” she said as the images started to repeat. With a tap, she stopped it recording but continued to watch the energy readouts.

“It better.” Harkness grabbed her elbow and pulled her back towards the door.

Looking up from her task, River saw that the far wall of the room had faded into a nondescript arc of darkness that wasn't exactly there and wasn't exactly not. It was rather fascinating actually, rather like the night sky had appeared in the world with no stars. Something about that tickled at the back of her brain as Harkness dragged her out of the room and back to the others.

“... rate of decrease is continuing to accelerate,” Toshiko was saying, “but the rate of acceleration is remaining steady. Maybe half an hour left.”

“Right then,” River said. “Hold tight.”

She pulled up the spatio-temporal coordinates of the site where she'd found Harkness.

“How are you going to go back there,” Owen asked, “if there isn't anything outside of here?”

“But there was, back then,” Harkness replied, his smug grin belied by the hint of worry in his eyes.

“Exactly.” River winked at him, hoping that hid the similar concern she was sure was mirrored in hers.

Ianto stiffened at that, she noticed. Bless. He handed over the last two items she'd need to pull this off, color staining his cheeks. 

She tucked them away and activated her vortex manipulator.

In a flash, she was back at the side of the hole she'd dug. At the treeline, a wolf glared at her, setting the hairs on the back of her neck on edge. River separated the two halves of the transducer and slid a tiny lever to one side. After reattaching the two sides, she pulled out the rather interesting spring-loaded devices Ianto had given her and put them in place to hold the two buttons depressed, keeping the transducer in continual playback mode.

A growl sounded from the trees.

“All right,” River muttered. “I'll be going in a tick.”

She tossed the device into the hole and started throwing shovelfuls of earth over it.

The wolf growled.

River mentally worked out the distance it would have to charge versus the weight of her blaster at her back and how quickly she could draw it and kept shoveling.

The earth shook.

“Oh, now, that can't be good.”

There wasn't enough earth covering the device. That wolf at the treeline or anything, really, could come dig it up and send everything pear-shaped.

Ah well, there was cheating, which she was already doing, and then there was cheating, which she might as well add to her sins.

Setting down her shovel, River flicked open the cover of her vortex manipulator and tapped the external teleport sequence.

Nothing happened.

Everything read correctly, but the pile of dirt stayed where it was.

“What the …?”

Just then, the wolf charged from the trees, snarling and snapping its teeth. River drew her blaster and held her ground. The wolf darted towards her, then back towards the mound of soil, which it started pawing furiously _into_ the hole.

River lowered the blaster slightly. “Who are you?”

The wolf looked at her again, eyes a yellow far too bright to belong on any Terrestrial animal.

  


[ ](http://slowsunrise.livejournal.com/56339.html)

  


Again, something tickled the edges of her mind, but she couldn't quite follow the thought. One thing was clear, however. The wolf was helping, and it wanted her gone, as it snarled again at her.

“That's me told then.” River holstered her gun and switched to the coordinates that would bring her back to the Torchwood Hub. Just before tapping the button to execute the temporal teleport, she looked the wolf in its bright eyes and seemed to see an understanding there. “Thank you.”

~0~

Jack looked up as the door to his office opened. Ianto stepped in and pulled the door shut behind him. Jack raised his eyebrows.

“Tosh says we have less than a quarter hour before we start to lose space in the main area.”

Jack nodded. It had been nearly thirty minutes since River had left, which was frustrating, as there was nothing left for the rest of them to do. They'd continued sifting through the logs for any additional ideas, but none were surfacing.

“I always knew it might be an end-of-the-world situation,” Ianto said, looking every bit as young as he was, even as his eyes looked so very much older. “Somehow, I'd never pictured it quite like this.”

Jack stood and came around his desk, taking Ianto into his arms. “Don't.”

“What will happen to you?” he asked, his words muffled as he buried his face in Jack's shoulder.

“I don't know.” Jack took a deep breath, savoring and memorizing Ianto's scent. If he was going to be the last thing to exist forever, if this was the end for everything and everyone but him, he wanted his last sensation to be something amazing. He turned to capture Ianto's lips with his.

Too soon, Ianto pulled back. His eyes were filled with a mixture of sadness, fear, and something else Jack had seen there more and more lately but had never dared put a name to.

“Jack, I ...”

“It's back!” Toshiko cried out. “The rest of Cardiff, I can see it!”

The two men pulled apart and ran to join the others around her desk. There, on all her screens, was Cardiff in all its literally blazing glory.

“Turnmill?” Owen asked, a quaver in his voice.

“Locked down. Nothing's changed. The meltdown's contained.” The grin on Tosh's face seemed to light up the Hub. “We did it!”

“And the world beyond Cardiff?” Jack asked.

“All there,” Tosh replied. “I'm seeing communications from just about every point on the globe. And before you ask, the rest of the solar system is right where we left it too.”

“Back to clean-up duty, then,” Ianto said, his composure firmly back in place. He turned and went into Jack's office, presumably to start planting explanations for the bombing. Jack decided not to follow just yet.

“What about this one?” Gwen asked, her gun once again trained on Johann. 

Before Jack could answer, there was a flash, and Dr. Song was standing in front of them.

“Did it work?” she asked, her eyes wild.

A cacophony of voices answered her, and Jack smiled to hear it as her eyes went from worried to ecstatic as she made out what they were saying.

“Wonderful!” she was all she managed to say before Gwen had wrapped her in an enthusiastic hug.

“Always a pleasure saving the world with you,” Gwen said as she let River go and took a couple of steps back towards the others. “You going to just run off again to wherever it is you go?”

Dr. Song glanced at her vortex manipulator. “Going to have to. They'll definitely have missed me by now, and that new guard will be in awful trouble.”

Jack just shook his head. “How do you manage to get that past them, anyway?”

“I have my ways.” She winked.

Ianto returned from Jack's office. “Sure you won't stay for a bit of coffee then? You did seem rather fond of it the last time.”

Owen said something under his breath that Jack thought probably involved his own disastrous attempts at working the coffee machine. 

“I really had better get going,” she said, “but I look forward to it.”

Ianto strode forward and nodded firmly as he shook her hand. “Till next time then.”

River's smile shifted slightly, but she nodded in return.

Owen approached her next.

“Thanks for everything,” he said. “Never mind the universe, I owe you my life several times over. You were right...”

“Owen,” Jack cut in warningly. “Please don't break the timeline when we've only just got the universe back.”

River raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like an interesting spoiler.”

“Let's just say you gave us some advice that's as good in the field as it is on the pull.” Owen winked.

Jack swallowed. It was true. They could have lost Owen at the Pharm if he hadn't been wearing his kevlar vest that day. As much as it chafed to know that she'd spotted that flaw in his leadership, they were all being more careful since then, at least when they knew in advance that they were going into a hostile situation.

“And that's enough out of you,” Jack said, pinning him with a glare.

Tosh wasn't as demonstrative as Gwen had been, but she gave River a glowing smile as she said her goodbyes.

Finally, with a shake of her head at Johann, River came to Jack.

“Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”

“You're welcome,” she replied. “Who knows? I may be the one needing your help someday.”

“Whenever you need it, and I do mean whenever.” He shook her hand firmly. He still didn't know what she was to the Doctor, still didn't know how she'd come to be involved with Jack's little team, but she had definitely earned any favors he could offer.

River just smiled, then turned to Johann.

“As for you,” she said, “you're coming with me.”

“What if I don't want to?” he asked. “Maybe I'd like to stick around, find out what's so special about this planet.”

“Did I sound like I was asking?” She grabbed his hand and tapped her Manipulator, which must have already been set, because they disappeared without another word.

For a moment, silence reigned in the Hub. The others might be wondering any number of things, but Jack was focused on trying to remember if there had ever been any mention of a Time Agent in Storm Cage. It was probably the only place that would hold Johann for long, so he rather hoped that was where River had taken him.

Ianto was the first to speak. “Cleanup duty then?”

“Right.” Jack shook off his reverie and started handing out assignments. While he had every intention of letting the civilian authorities handle as much as they could, he felt personally responsible for the devastation Gray and Johann had wreaked on the city, and so he and his team were going to do everything in their power to help.

Several hours later, he finally let himself return to the cryo-chamber Ianto had helped him put Gray in. It was probably futile, but he had to hope there would be some way to help his brother, someday.

His fingers flipped open the faceplate of his vortex manipulator almost of their own accord. It was too soon. It was self-indulgent. It might compromise the hasty cryo-prep they'd done. But he needed to see his brother, just once more, to say goodbye properly. 

A pair of hands separated his and brought them to his waist as arms wrapped around him. Jack leaned back into Ianto's embrace.

“Let him rest,” Ianto said. “Time you did as well.” 

Everything in him rebelled against the idea. There was still so much he needed to do, so many amends he needed to make. To his brother. To his team. To the city. Still, he could hear the sense in the other man's words. He nodded sharply and let himself be led out of the morgue.

~0~

It was an odd way to receive a message, he thought. All of his current team were accounted for, even the ones off-planet, and there wasn't anyone he listed as family these days. Hadn't been for centuries. It just wasn't safe, on many more levels than he could enumerate. Could be a trap, but if it was, it was a clumsy one.

When he arrived at the hospital, Jack was on guard, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that met his eyes in the room they led him to.

“You haven't changed,” the man said. 

Jack just stared at him dumbly. For all the faces he'd known and forgotten, this was the one that he'd known would always haunt him. Was he finally going mad?

“You were gone,” he said finally. “When we moved the cryo-chambers before they started building the Cobalt Pyramid, yours was empty. I thought … Gray?”

The nurse who'd guided him through the hospital handed him a sealed envelope bearing his name. It held a piece of paper that had been folded into tiny sections but looked remarkably fresh for all of that. 

“She said this would explain things.”

He opened it.

>   
> 
> 
> _River,_  
> 

>   
> 
> 
> _I know we all owe you more than we can ever repay, but I need to ask one more favor of you._  
> 

>   
> 
> 
> _Jack's put his brother into cryogenic stasis. He seems to believe there will come a time when medical or psychiatric science will be able to help him. That may be true, but I fear that keeping him here in the meanwhile is asking for trouble._  
> 

>   
> 
> 
> _If you are from the future, and if it is true that he can be helped, please bring Gray there. Funds that may be used for his treatment can be accessed ..._  
> 

Tears filled Jack's eyes as he skimmed over the details of the rest of the letter and then lingered over Ianto's hasty but impeccable signature. Another face he would never forget, now for yet another reason.

He looked up at his brother. “Gray?”

The other man nodded, and the madness Jack remembered, the look that haunted his dreams every bit as much as the feeling of fingers slipping away from his, no longer filled those eyes. 

Jack launched himself forward and pulled his brother into his arms, hope lancing through him like sunlight.

_Fin_


End file.
